Just before launching the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush affirmed that “we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty ... they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.” The result of the war in Iraq was far different: region-wide suffering and sectarian conflict poised to continue for generations. As for Afghanistan, Bush proclaimed in 2004: “Now the country is changing. There’s women’s rights. There’s equality under the law. Young girls now go to school, many for the first time ever, thanks to the United States and our coalition of liberators.” But two decades of exhaustive U.S. efforts to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan fell embarrassingly short, with the U.S. withdrawal last summer giving way to Taliban rule and a humanitarian nightmare. Across these historical episodes, noble ambitions backfired with dreadful consequences.

THE UKRAINE question has similarly exposed the inescapable tensions between lofty ambitions and geopolitical realities. These tensions were, for the most part, in abeyance amid the bipolarity of the Cold War, when geopolitical expedience guided the U.S. strategy of containment. The Yalta agreement struck by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at the end of World War II was the ultimate realist compromise, leaving much of Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. Roosevelt and Churchill were wisely yielding principle to pragmatism by providing Soviet Russia with a buffer zone on its western flank. Such strategic restraint paid off handsomely; it contributed to stability during the long decades of the Cold War, buying time for a patient policy of containment that ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union.

NATO’s eastward expansion then began in the 1990s, the era of unipolarity, when Washington was confident that the triumph of American power and purpose would usher in the universalization of democracy, capitalism, and a liberal, rules-based international order. The Clinton administration embraced a grand strategy of “democratic enlargement”—a key plank of which was opening NATO’s doors to Europe’s new democracies and formally welcoming into the West the states of the defunct and discredited Warsaw Pact.

NATO’s eastward enlargement has fostered both moral and strategic gains. The West capitalized on the opportunity to reverse Yalta; NATO members could reassert their moral authority by integrating Europe’s newest democracies. The allure of meeting the political standards for entry into the Western alliance helped guide through democratic transitions more than a dozen countries that long suffered under communist rule. Opening NATO’s doors also provided the alliance strategic depth and increased aggregate military strength. The defense guarantee that comes with membership serves as a strong deterrent to Russian adventurism—a prized commodity given Moscow’s renewed appetite for invading its neighbors. Indeed, Finland and Sweden have left behind decades of neutrality in order to avail themselves of that guarantee.

But despite these principled and practical benefits, the enlargement of NATO also came with a significant strategic downside: it laid the foundation for a post-Cold War security order that excluded Russia while bringing the world’s most formidable military alliance ever closer to its borders. It was precisely for this reason that the Clinton administration initially launched the Partnership for Peace—a security framework that enabled all European states to cooperate with NATO without drawing new dividing lines. But that alternative fell by the wayside early in January 1994, when President Bill Clinton declared in Prague that “the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members but when and how.” The first wave of expansion extended membership to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999, followed since by four additional bouts of enlargement. So far, NATO has admitted fifteen countries (encompassing some 100 million people) that were formerly in Russia’s sphere of influence.

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🇮🇳 For our Indian friends (and not only them)🕉

CANWAL SIBAL
Diplomat, former Foreign Secretary of India, former Indian Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia.

RASIGAN MAHARAJ
General Director of the Institute for Economic Research in the Field of Innovation at the Tswane Technical University (South Africa).

THE INTERVIEW IS PREPARED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE TRANSFER OF "INTERNATIONAL REVIEW" (RUSSIA 24)
The West is fighting a battle against the rest of the world and is trying to erase Russia from the geographical map. There is no system of European security and is not expected. On the eve of the new political season, we asked several experts in international affairs what had irreversibly changed in the previous six months.

It is published in Russian, so I had to reversely translate it into English. There may be minor discrepancies that are not changing the meaning of what was said.
#India #TransFormator ⬇️⬇️⬇️

🇮🇳 No battle between democracies and autocracies
Kanwal Sibal, Ex-Secretary of Foreign Affairs of India, Ambassador of India to Russia in 2004-2007

To some extent, the trends we have seen before have deepened and worsened. And it can be said that certain irreversible international processes have taken shape.

First, the complete collapse of relations between Russia and the United States. Not that they were normal before. But the American and European response to the Ukraine crisis, draconian sanctions aimed at Russia, put an end to diplomacy. The sanctions are strange because they aim to erase Russia from the geographical map, but this is impossible. Russia is the largest country in the world. Russia will have to deal with. It is impossible to pursue a policy as if Russia could be isolated, while the world would continue to exist in peace. So it's a total bust.

Secondly, there is not and is not expected any system of European security. If there were hopes for its occurrence, then they dissipated.

Thirdly, the West has turned finance into a weapon, and this trend, I think, will have a long-term effect. Steps taken to confiscate state assets and private funds without any legal procedures will have far-reaching consequences. The rest of the world is watching closely. Measures are to be expected, not immediate, but gradual, but they will be taken to avoid severe damage.

The non-Western world will reduce dependence on the dollar where possible. Trade in national currencies begins, and this long process will not only shake the dominance of the dollar, but will affect the entire American hegemony in the financial sphere. Which, in turn, leads to fragmentation of the international system and the global economy.

There is no battle between democracies and autocracies, as the West says. This is a huge simplification. Most of the non-Western world are not autocracies - they just live by their own principles. So the correct description of what is happening is not democracy against autocracies, but the West against the rest of the world. Western discourse about values and rule-based order is starting to sound more and more empty. It is becoming less and less acceptable to the rest of the world in terms of ideas about how the world order should be arranged. This means that multipolarity is gaining momentum, and globalization, which was under attack before, is now beginning to lose its meaning.
#India

🇮🇳 The world is one and indivisible
Rasigan Maharaj, CEO, Institute for Economic Research in Innovation at Tswane Technical University (South Africa)

According to the United Nations Population Program, the world's population will reach 8 billion in October. But the health of all these people is under threat, and the events of recent years have confirmed this.

Nearly two years after India and South Africa proposed to release medical products important for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, the World Trade Organization decided to act differently, the issue drags on and off. And this is after we have lost millions of people from this disease.

This is evidence of how the geopolitical order works, what its foundation and tools are. It is clear whose interests it serves and which corporations are behind it. And behind this is visible the historical trajectory of how governments stopped representing the interests of the people, and began to represent the interests of specific groups.

The world is one and indivisible, therefore the highest degree of inequality poses a threat to everyone. The failure of the WTO to make a decision that is important for all is evidence that we must transform multilateral institutions to reflect truly universal interests, otherwise we will face the natural disaster that we know is coming. And we must make sure that the institutions serve the interests of these same 8 billion, and that all benefits are evenly distributed among them.
#India

French TV made a report about a Ukrainian boy, supporting the military. It is OK, what would you expect.

But what are the girls at the background are doing? Who they think they are supporting?

Putin was talking about that kind of children and their education recently:
"They didn’t even know that Ukraine and Russia were part of a single state – the Soviet Union. They just don’t know it. That’s how they were taught."

Warships of the Pacific Fleet of the Russian Navy and the Navy of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) at the strategic command and staff exercises "Vostok-2022".
#China

Well, there is a long report about Ukrainian/US biological weapons program. Here is just an extract from it. You may have a look for yourself. Starts from here.

◽️ Fifth. There is information on the development and patenting in the United States of technical means of delivery and use of biological weapons based on UAVs. For example, U.S. Patent and Trademark Agency has issued document No. 8 967 029 for an unmanned aerial vehicle for spreading infested insects in the air. The description of the patent states that with this device, enemy troops can be destroyed or disabled without risk to U.S. troops.

◽️ As you know, under U.S. law, a patent in the U.S. cannot be granted in the absence of an actual device in existence. It is possible to conclude that the container as a means of delivering biological agents has been developed and produced.

◽️ Considering the development of technical means for delivery and use of biological weapons in the United States, Ukraine's interest in the supply of unmanned aerial vehicles is of particular concern.

◽️ We have at our disposal the confirmation of Ukraine's request to the Turkish manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles Bayraktar dated from December 15, 2021, to equip this UAV with aerosol spraying systems and mechanisms with a capacity of over 20 litres.

◽️ With a UAV flight range of up to 300 km and containers filled with biological formulations, there is a real threat of large-scale use of biological weapons on the territory of the Russian Federation.

◽️ This fact raises the question: for what purpose did the United States develop and patent technical means of delivery of biological weapons, and what is the reason for Ukraine's interest in acquiring such technical means?

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@mod_russia_en

The course towards militarization and PR in Ukraine brought to trouble: at the exhibition of ammunition (!) In Chernihiv, a grenade launcher went off, as a result of which three adults and four children were injured, and a two-year-old boy is in a serious condition in the hospital.

An unusual mural calling for peace between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was painted in Australia.

I would recommend our subscribers to visit and join a very thoroughly prepared and well presented channel with detailed information on the cases of Ukraine institutionalizing nazism-fascism ideology.

Our colleague is doing a really good and important job of collecting evidence and making them available to the public.
Please support him and the cause of antifascism.
There is also a chat, where you can ask him questions directly.